It’s NBA Playoffs 101 for an inexperienced Nuggets coaching staff

Ultimately, the games will be won on the court. The players will decide the outcome. Plays, as always, will be the indelible memories of the series.

But make no mistake, the Nuggets’ series against Utah is just as big for a young-in-experience coaching staff as it is for the players trying to prove they’re still one of the NBA’s elite teams. For Adrian Dantley, Chad Iske, Jamahl Mosley and John Welch, this series can be a coming-out party or a back-to-the-drawing board experience.

And they face a Texas-sized challenge.

They are up against a tidal wave of experience. Utah coach Jerry Sloan alone has 192 playoff games under his belt, ranging from the first round to NBA Finals. Sloan and his primary staff of Phil Johnson, Tyrone Corbin and Scott Layden have 34 games of playoff experience together. They’ve seen the same things, made hundreds of adjustments and know just the right way to jump-start that team and its players at the optimum times.

As presently constructed, with some roles tweaked and some significantly changed after the indefinite loss of coach George Karl to cancer treatments in March, this current Nuggets staff has zero playoff games together. They have 21 regular season games together. It’s been a re-learning process in everything from daily communication to how to come together and make big decisions in big moments in big games.

It’s been fairly fascinating to witness Dantley’s growth. Early on, there was a game when he felt he should have called a timeout sooner to stop a run, but didn’t and let the contest get out-of-hand. There were the games where he plain forgot about rookie Ty Lawson’s presence on the bench. Dantley called himself out in both instances. But then started the comprehension stage. He found an effective lineup of Lawson, Anthony Carter and J.R. Smith to counteract some bigger opponents. He displayed a more commanding voice. His players stepped up their level of responsibility and the Nuggets ended the season with five wins in seven games after losing six of the previous nine.

Should the Nuggets win this first-round series, it could be easy to dismiss it as overwhelming talent mixed with savvy veteran leadership against a team they owned in the regular season, which got them over the top. But rest assured, these coaches’ brains, mettle and cool under pressure will have been tested. And they will have passed that test. Sloan is not going to make mistakes of inexperience. He’s seen all of the chess moves before, and trust, no Nuggets pawn is going to take his queen.

And yet, Sloan’s a Dantley fan. Heck, Dantley’s jersey hangs in the rafters of EnergySolutions Arena. But it won’t stop Sloan from taking advantage of any stone the Nuggets acting coach leaves unturned. Quite frankly, in a series in which the clear better collection of talent – top of the roster to the bottom – resides in Denver, Sloan and an uber-experienced coaching staff are Utah’s best assets outside of stars Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer.

But Dantley, Iske, Mosley, Welch – and Tim Grgurich – are going to have to counteract what they see, prepare as they never have, and be prepared to make all the right moves in order to advance their team to the next round.

There was an early flickering light among some Nuggets players, who were losing belief that the coaching staff could see them through. Huddles had too many voices in them. Frustration led to multiple team and players-only meetings. But in time all of the talking led to solidarity behind their new coach.

Dantley has consulted with Karl for strategy and reassurance, and he’s received significant doses of both. But Karl can’t be on the bench with him, and won’t be a ‘lifeline’ cell phone call away when the pressure-cooker gets turned up in the middle of a tightly-contested game. That’s when Dantley is going to have to draw from his experience and make a decision. That’s when the staff is going to have to put their heads together and diagram up the right play, make the right substitution, call the right timeout. It’s their team now and they’re going to have to put their stamp on it.

The rewards, if they do, can be far-reaching. There are several head-coach hopefuls on the staff, and that process can be sped up if this series goes well. But could hit significant speed bumps if it doesn’t.

Either way, for all but Grgurich, who debates yearly on whether to retire or not, this is the biggest challenge of their young careers. And in a league where experience wins playoff series almost every time, this staff goes out, NBA school books in hand, looking to buck a trend and topple a coaching giant.

Chris Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com

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Chris Dempsey arrived at The Denver Post in Dec. 2003 after seven years at the Boulder Daily Camera, where he primarily covered the University of Colorado football and men's basketball teams. A University of Colorado-Boulder alumnus, Dempsey covers the Nuggets and also chips in on college sports.